TJ. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



cherries: "She operated on them in a deliberate, somewhat fastidious 

 manner, piercing the skin with her sharp bill and then slowly tasting 

 and swallowing the juice and perhaps some of the pulp also. In no 

 instance was the cherry removed from the stem. This was in marked 

 contrast to the behavior of the greedy Robins about her, the Robins 

 first plucking the cherry and then swallowing it whole, not without 

 some difficulty." 



Late in July, when cherries are ripe, the now fully grown young 

 orioles come to the cherry trees alone or with their parent. Here they 

 lean downwards, draw up a cherry and, steadying it in some way, 

 appear to pick out mouthful after mouthful without detaching the 

 fruit from its stem or the branch. They eat cahnly and daintily, as 

 a rose-breasted grosbeak eats a cherry, not like a robin who snatches 

 it off and bolts it down. But the orioles swallow the little cornel 

 berries whole. 



Alexander F. Skutch (MS.) sends to A. C. Bent the following ac- 

 count of the bird's food during the winter: "While in Central America, 

 the Baltimore orioles subsist upon a considerable variety of both 

 animal and vegetable foods. In humid regions, where the boughs of 

 the trees are thickly overgrown with moss and lichens, they find many 

 small creatures in the mossy covering. In the dry months of February 

 and March, when the madre de cacao trees (Gliricidia sepium), which 

 are planted for living fence posts, have shed their foliage and covered 

 their long, slender branches with delicately pink, pealike blossoms, the 

 orioles spend much time probing the flowers. The bright orange-and- 

 black birds are a lovely sight amid the cluster of pink blossoms. 

 Whether they seek chiefly the nectar or the small insects of various 

 sorts that swarm about the flowers, I do not know. When the winged 

 brood of the termites fills the air at the end of an afternoon shower, 

 the Baltimore orioles, along with a host of other birds of the most 

 varied kinds, take advantage of this manna and snatch the slow-flying 

 creatures from the air. But with their slender bills they are not par- 

 ticularly adept at flycatching, and often miss their intended victim. 

 During the early months of the year, when succulent fruits are not 

 abundant among the forests of southern Costa Rica, the Baltimore 

 orioles eat the dry green fruits of the Cecropia tree, clinging to the 

 slender branches of the dangling inflorescence and tearing off small 

 billfuls; in this feasting they are joined by many kinds of toucans, 

 honeycreepers, tanagers, thrushes, and even flycatchers. 



"For several years I have maintained a feeding shelf in a guava tree 

 besides my house in southern Costa Rica, daily placing there ripe 

 bananas or plantains. The Baltimore orioles were not so quick to 

 find this new source of food as some of the resident birds; but once 

 they made the discovery they became regular patrons, and for the 



